QuickOnlineTips » Tools

Create Short Urls No One Dares to Click

QuickOnlineTips — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 03:30:33 +0000

Now you can create short urls for your blog links that no one click ever! Try ShadyURL which will make your url look like its pointing to spam pages, loaded with malware and virus file – and ensure people never click your links.

We used Shadyurl on our site url and got this scary url with exe files and trojans.

You have an option to shorten the url too, see what we got

So if you want to scare people away from your suspicious links, create a shady url and never get anyone to click your blog link again!

Another cool way to scare people away from clicking your links is to make extra long urls!

Original article: Create Short Urls No One Dares to Click
Copyright 2010. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.

Third Annual Crunchies Awards Winners

QuickOnlineTips — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 13:13:24 +0000

The third annual Crunchies Awards winners have been announced and its a line up of the best that technology has to offer. The Crunchies awards recognize and celebrate the most compelling startups, internet and technology innovations of the year.

Crunchies Awards Winners

Check out the Crunchies winners.

Best Technology Achievement: Chrome OS (Google)
Best Internet Application: Dropbox
Best Social App: Farmville
Best Bootstrapped StartUp: Tinychat
Best Mobile Application: Foursquare
Best International: Spotify
Best Time Sink Application: DailyBooth
Best Design: Animoto
Best Enterprise: Google Docs/Office
Best CleanTech: Sun Run
Best New Gadget: Barnes & Noble nook
Best Tech PR: Spark
Best Angel: Ron Conway (SV Angel)
Best VC Firm: Accel Partners
Founder Of The Year: Aaron Patzer (Mint)
CEO Of The Year: Mark Pincus (Zynga)
Best New Startup Or Product Of 2009: Bing (Microsoft)
Best Overall Startup Or Product Of 2009: Facebook

Original article: Third Annual Crunchies Awards Winners
Copyright 2010. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.

Readability is Best Tool to Read Online

QuickOnlineTips — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 08:34:40 +0000

What is the best, easiest and most comfortable way to read online in your web browser? I use Readability, a bookmarklet that makes reading really comfortable, reduces eye strain and has brought back the joy of reading on the web, without the online clutter, animated ads and widget rich sidebars and footers.

The best way to start is to customize your bookmarklet, you can choose from
Style – Newspaper, Novel, eBook, Terminal
Font Size - Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large
Side Margin – Narrow, Medium, Wide, Extra Wide

You can see the preview at the bottom while editing your settings. When you like what you see as per your most comfortable reading design format, Simply drag the bookmarklet to you browser bookmark bar. Then when you are on a cluttered page, click the Readability bookmarklet and behold the clean readable page. I personally like the Newspaper style, large size and Wide margins. Here is my Readability bookmarklet. You can remove the Readability effect by simply reloading the page.

For example – This is a NYT page before Readability

As you see I have hardly access to any article text as of now, and see lots of navigation menu, lots of ads etc. and now see the difference on the same page when I click Readability.

Did you know that Readability won the Pogie award 2009 for the single best tech idea of 2009! Get Readability and experience the joy of reading online. Of course you can also reduce eye strain by turning on Cleartype, increasing the monitor refresh rate, and programmers can get more readable programming fonts.

Original article: Readability is Best Tool to Read Online
Copyright 2010. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.

15 Free Services to Schedule Tweets on Twitter

QuickOnlineTips — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 18:19:23 +0000

Guest Post by Malvinder Virdi.
How can you schedule tweets on Twitter for free? Twitter is one of the most successful social media services today on the internet and so it is to schedule tweets on Twitter. Did you know that more than half of your twitter followers are online while you are asleep or not online – which makes your tweets nullify as your tweets have been replaced by the other latest tweets from other users.

One of the important features of the third party Twitter clients is to schedule your tweets in further, and is still not adapted by Twitter. Scheduling tweets gets rid of the asleep and offline problem and allows you to update your Twitter page over 24 hours so that you have a better chance to get in each and every followers reach.

Best Web Apps to Schedule Tweets

There are many third party web services / web application which enables twitter users to schedule their tweets in further. Here is My list of Best Web Application for scheduling tweets on twitter :

Stumble Upon Short URL Service (Su.pr) : Need a Stumble Upon account to use this service. Enables you to schedule tweets at a specified day (14 days in advance) and time (based on PST). Additional features includes posting on Stumble Upon, detail analysis of the Tweet and Url mentioned in Tweet.
Hootsuite : One of the best third party web applications for Twitter that enables users to send tweets later at a specified day (No limit of days in advance) and time based on your local timezone to unlimited multiple twitter accounts linked with Hootsuite. Additional features includes detail analysis of the tweets, provide a Hootsuite toolbar for viewers to rate and re-tweet, different columns for sent, mentions, direct and search tweets, different tabs for multiple twitter accounts, auto tweeting feature for RSS.
CoTweet : allows you to schedule the tweets to twitter for any specified day and time (No limit of days in advance) from 6 different twitter accounts. Additional features include manage multiple Twitter accounts with multiple users, allows you to use co-tags as part of a message while sharing an account with multiple people. Option to use authenticated bit.ly accounts for tweet analysis and details.
SocialOomph : also know as Tweet-Later provides users with free as well as paid account. Scheduling tweets on free socialoomph is based on the min, hours, day or weeks from current day and time or specified day and time. While registering you can specify your time zone and format along with bit.ly authenticated account info for tweet details. Limitation for scheduling tweets is 12 tweets/hour. Additional unique features includes Auto Follow option for all the new followers, direct replies for new followers, email digest for all the replies in a week.
Dynamic Tweets : allows twitter users to schedule the tweets to Twitter based on how many minutes/hours/days/weeks later, or in a specific time along with the ability to add the tracking code for tweet details and analysis to multiple twitter accounts. Dynamic Tweets also provide users with premium account which has the capability of Recurring Scheduling Options, Bulk Upload of Tweets, Spinnable Text Options and Live Automatic Tweets based on predefined conditions in your data or website.
Future Tweets : is a primarily a third party web application to schedule Future Tweets as the name suggest. It allows user to register via Email ID or Open ID. Send tweets at a specific time in the future or send a reoccuring (No more support for reoccurring tweets as it is violation of Twitter policy) tweet daily, weekly, monthly or yearly ! (Note : IST not listed) along with capability to insert some special characters into your tweets. Only this which I personally don’t like about Future Tweets is the Ads on Left Panel of the user dashboard.
Twittontime : allows you to sign in with Twitter OAuth (Login Information). After selecting your time zone, you can start scheduling your tweets to twitter. It is a Twitter Calender for your further tweets, where you need to select the day and time from the calender, write down your tweets, select the time and click save to schedule your tweet.
Tweet Miner : available as web and desktop client for scheduling plus rolling tweets between specific time interval on week days. All the further tweets can be scheduled on the basis of specified day and time. Additional Features includes RSS to Twitter, Multiple Twitter Accounts, Instant Re-tweet without editing, following a twitter search word and many more. Paid Version of Tweet Miners are also available.
Twaitter : do not require registration as it uses Twitter OAuth method for login and provides you with unique URL to your Twitter account on Twaitter (i.e. http://twaitter.com/twitterusername). Allows you to schedule tweets to twitter for specific Day and Time (Option to choose different time-zone) with no limitation on days in advance. Unique Additional features for scheduling tweets includes instant translation in different languages, spell check and use of authenticated bit.ly account for tweet details.
Taweet : allows you to sign in with Twitter OAuth and verify your email account to schedule your tweets to multiple twitter accounts. It is a social calendar and event promotion application for Twitter. Taweet displays all of the Future Tweets that you create and makes it as a social calendar for sharing with friends. Scheduling a Tweet is based on specific day, date and time.
Tweet-U-Later : allows you to schedule your tweets with Tweet-U-Later Web interface and Email. It also allows you to schedule recurring tweets. While scheduling tweets you need to mention the time span is how many min, hours, days, months or years ? It does not support the specific Day and Date format of scheduling like 10.oo am on 11.12.2018.
Tweet Funnel : beta version is free for all. You can schedule your tweets along with keeping the same in the draft mode like emails. Additional features includes - you can see the tweets of home stream, mentions, direct messages and reply, retweet, or favorite them. It is primarly a business Twitter clients which allows you to cooperate to use multiple Twitter users & accounts, tweet scheduling, email tweeting and brand alerts, editing and then approving the tweets before they are published.
Twuffer : allows you to compose a list of future tweets, and schedule their release with your twitter login via OAuth after selecting your time zone. Additional features includes appointment reminders, allows you to schedule tweets time based and how many hours from now format and many more.,
Schedule Twitter Posts : is yet another paid twitter scheduling services, which provides 5 maximum schedule updates within 4 hours of time interval for free users. If some one subscribes to Pro or Premium account via your affiliation link, you get 50% of the commissions. (I am not the part of any Affiliation)
TwitResponse : Twitter + Auto-responder allows you to setup unlimited further tweets to your twitter account in how many hours, min or days from now time format. Currently Twitresponse is in beta version.

Now you have the ability to tweet day and night, even when you are asleep. What are you waiting for? Start using one of the above Tweet Scheduling Services for free. If you need to integrate Twitter with applications on your Desktop, don’t forget to check full series of twitter integration with other applications.

Personal suggestion to readers of Quick Online Tip for using free services for Scheduling Tweet includes Hootsuite & Su.pr as both services allow users to integrate RSS into Twitter, Schedule Tweets, with clear and clutter free interface, no installation, exposure to 8 million users, detailed analysis of each tweeted tweet on Twitter.

Guest author Malvinder Virdi blogs at Binterest (Blog of ur Interest) about web 2.0 technologies, useful freeware alternatives, web applications, tech tips & updates on ms office, twitter, firefox. You can also write a guest article and share your Twitter tools with our readers.

Original article: 15 Free Services to Schedule Tweets on Twitter
Copyright 2010. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.

3 Little Known Widgets to Customize and Embed on Your Site

QuickOnlineTips — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:39:49 +0000

Guest post by Ann Smarty.
It is always good to give your site readers something they can enjoy themselves with. Getting creative with what you offer your blog followers to spend some time with is essential: this way you encourage them to share your content and promote your site.

Here are 3 little known tools that allow you to create, customize and embed widgets to grow your site popularity:

1. Create a (Sliding) Puzzle

ProProfs is a free online tool that allows to create various brain games and embed them to your blogs.

Steps:
1. Register at the site;
2. Go to “Sliding puzzles” section of the site and click “Create a Sliding Puzzle“;
3. Provide an image by searching Google, entering a direct image URL or uploading from your computer:

4. Provide the puzzle title, description, name and the difficulty level.

Preview:

Cloudy road sliding puzzle game » tile sliding puzzle

2. Countdown Widget

CountDown2Zero.com allows you to create a cool-looking, fully customizable widget counting time down to the event you are looking forward to:

Steps:
1. Go to the site (no registration required) and click “Create Your Countdown!”
2. Provide the following details:

The event you are waiting for;
Widget description and tags;
Your moniker and email;
Your time zone;
End of countdown (time and date);
The widget color (two if you want a gradient color).

Preview:

3. Flickr or Picasa SlideShow

PictoBrowser is a fun web app that lets you create a slideshow of any Flick or Picasa member’s photo:

Steps:
1. Enter your (or any other user’s) Flickr Username.
2. Select images by tags, groups and sets.
3. Customize the display elements of the slideshow:

Image alignment;
Player width and height;
Background color; etc.

Preview:

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Are you aware of any other less known widgets you can embed to your blog to entertain your readers?

The guest post is by Ann Smarty, an SEO consultant and social media power user. You can also write a guest article and share your favorite tools.

Original article: 3 Little Known Widgets to Customize and Embed on Your Site
Copyright 2010. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.

Replacing OpenDNS with Google Public DNS

QuickOnlineTips — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:23:51 +0000

I have been using OpenDNS to browse faster, safer, and fix DNS errors. But now Google Public DNS is a new challenger which is encourging web users to use their settings on Networks to speed up your browsing experience and get improved security.

Google Public DNS is a free, global Domain Name System (DNS) resolution service, that you can use as an alternative to your current DNS provider. Since a faster and safer DNS infrastructure could significantly improve the web browsing experience, Google Public DNS promises to do just that.

Get started with Google Public DNS
Read the configuration instructions and then configure your network settings to use the IP addresses 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as your DNS servers. Remember after that your client programs will perform all DNS lookups using Google Public DNS. For once .. no Google account needed.

Quick Start on Windows Vista
Go the Control Panel > Click Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center > Manage network connections > Right-click Local Area Connection / Wireless Network Connection > Click Properties > Select Networking tab > Click Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) > Click Properties > Replace Preferred DNS server and Alternate DNS server with Google DNS servers: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 > OK.

So which is better – OpenDNS or Google Public DNS? Both are really good and only time will tell. The best part is that short Google IP addresses are really much easier to remember than OpenDNS. I switched and its working lightening fast as of now. Another ace by Google to speed up the web. And if you are still using the DNS settings of your ISP, try out these DNS services and feel the difference … and secure your browsing.

Original article: Replacing OpenDNS with Google Public DNS
Copyright 2010. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.

The War Between Mediafire and Rapidshare

QuickOnlineTips — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:11:58 +0000

Guest post by Akif
Have you ever heard of Mediafire or Rapidshare? You may have already used them and downloaded many GBs of stuff. These websites offer something called “one-click file storage”. One-click file hosting is an internet based service that allows users to easily upload whatever they want, except copyrighted materials, from their hard drives or from another similar file hosting provider (called remote upload). This is usually free or very cheap.

These sites have many users utilising their services every day. So I thought it would be a great idea to explain these websites further for people who are curious to learn more. In this article I will explain some of the features of Mediafire and Rapidshare and compare them.

There are a few popular one-click file storage services, the market leader right now is Rapidshare. Rapidshare.com is a German one-click storage website operating from Sweden and financed by paid Premium members. They still offer a free service to non-premium users with some restrictions. A non-premium user cannot upload more than 100Mb of files. The user is then supplied with a URL where the file can be downloaded which allows anyone to download the uploader’s file.

Another popular one-click web hosting site Mediafire started up in 2006 and is located in Texas, USA. The domain Mediafire.com has received plenty of internet user’s attention in a short time because of its rather few limitations for non-premium users compared to similar service providers.

Mediafire vs. Rapidshare

Comparison of Traffic:

According to the Compete.com study, Mediafire gets 1 visitor for each 2 Rapidshare visitors. The figures are misleading though. Lets see how many links there are on the internet for each site.

Link Counts:

All the Mediafire links on the internet: 17.900.000
All the Rapidshare links on the internet: 140.000.000

According to Google search results Rapidshare has over 140 million incoming links on the internet although Mediafire only has approximately 18 million links. So why – according to Compete.com results – does Mediafire seem much more popular than the Google results suggest? As I mentioned before, Mediafire’s rather few limitations attracted many more downloaders than it would if it has the same restrictions as Rapidshare. Also, Rapidshare encourages their users to share more Rapid links with their point system.

Are you wondering why I searched “Mediafire.com/?”? Because all the download links from Mediafire.com are in the same format which starts with “Mediafire.com/?”. The same is also currently true for Rapidshare links, which start “rapidshare.com/files”. Of course, a forum/blog poster may link to the file with another name, or the same links may have been shared more than once. Also note that Google results are not constant, you might be reading this post a while after I wrote it. Ignore this for now thought because we are just making a comparison.

What is Rapidshare Point System?

Rapidshare started a service called Collector’s Zone. This Zone allows users to gain free membership and some gifts. The more your links are downloaded the more points you will gain. Users are able to gain 1 point for each successful download as long as the file is larger than 1MB and the downloader generated less then 5 points in the last hour. This system though has also caused some unusual uploading habits; Users started to make 100MB files to 120MB just to bump up their link count (from 1 to 2) and to upload files which are already available on the Rapidshare servers. Despite this Rapidshare didn’t give up their promotion system. By contrast Mediafire has no promotion system for their users and this has prevented file uploads from Mediafire fans who always use Mediafire to download their files for free.

Conclusion:

Each service provider has their own upsides and downsides. Mediafire has less restrictions for free users like allowing download accelerators (something which is very rare among similar web hosting providers). Rapidshare use collector’s zone to increase their available link count while focusing their attention improving the experience for Premium users.

Guest article by Akif from Mediafire Search, which offers online search for Mediafire.com links. You can also write a guest article and share valuable insights with our readers.

How to Unfollow All on Twitter?

QuickOnlineTips — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:05:42 +0000

Do you want to remove everyone you’re following on twitter? Now there is a powerful mass unfollow Twitter tool that promises to remove all people you are following in minutes.

So why would you want to unfollow all people Twitter? On Twitter, when someone follows you, you follow back to reciprocate the gesture. If you are in the Twitter followers number game, then you could end up following thousands of people, not knowing who they are. This will lead to hundreds of Direct messages, spam and this will not let you follow people you know, all the while filling your Twitter page with Tweets you do not want to read. So you just want to start anew… its better than deleting your Twitter account.

Want to make a fresh start? John Chow has launched his new tool called UnfollowAll – but remember, it is irreversible so be absolutely sure what you are doing.

5 Free Programs to Manage Windows Clipboard

QuickOnlineTips — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:52:44 +0000

Guest post by Aseem Kishore.
Looking for free Windows Clipboard mangers? The Windows clipboard is probably the most under-recognized feature of the entire Windows family, yet it’s probably used the most often. In this post, I will give you my list of the 5 most useful clipboard manager tools that will help you increase productivity.

Best Free Clipboard Managers for Windows

1. Ditto – Ditto is an open source extension to the standard Windows Clipboard. You can store text, images, HTML, or any custom formatted content onto the clipboard. It has a simple and easy to use interface and a lot of cool features. For example, you can search previous copy entries and you can also keep multiple clipboards from multiple computers in sync with each other! And the data is encrypted when sent over the network. Even better! It also uses a database backend, so accessing and storing clipped content is super fast. Overall, it’s one of my favorites.

2. xNeat – This little program is really tiny! It weighs in at only 644KB! If you want something that will let you store more items in your clipboard and not eat up very much RAM, then xNeat is the clipboard manager for you. Of course, it’s not as fancy as Ditto, basically allowing you to bring up a menu with a list of all the items you have copied to the clipboard. You can setup hotkey also to make the copying and pasting very efficient.

3. Clipboard Manager – If you love using the Sidebar in Windows Vista and Windows 7, then you’re going to like clipboard manager. It’s actually a Windows Live Gallery gadget. Since it’s a gadget, it runs in the Windows Sidebar and lets you manage your clips from the sidebar itself, which is pretty neat. The copied items show up in a nice list that is also styled just like your sidebar.

4. Ten Clips – Another lightweight and easy to use clipboard manager is Ten Clips. Everything can be controlled by hotkeys, so you never have to use the mouse. If you work with any kind of data where you are always copying and pasting between programs, Ten Clips will make it much easier. It’s main standout feature is that you can quickly paste “purified” text, which means it removes all formatting and paste in uppercase or lowercase.

5. PasteCopy.NET – Though this program requires the .NET Framework to be installed, it works really well on Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2003/2008. It also is the only clipboard manager in the list to support multiple languages. It has some cool features like auto convert of HTML to RTF or TXT and auto convert of RTF to TXT. What’s really cool, though, is that you can mouse over and see a preview of the actual clipped item. It also has an export and print function built in.

Are you using another clipboard manager that I didn’t mention here? If so, post in the comments! Enjoy!

Aseem Kishore is a blogger and Internet entrepreneur who blogs at Online Tech Tips and Help Desk Geek about technology, software, and computers. You can also write a guest article on QOT and share your tips and tools.

Convert Your Blogger Blog to Book Easily

QuickOnlineTips — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:17:10 +0000

How can you convert your Blogger blog into a printed book and sell it to make extra money online? Google has partnered with Blog2Print and now offers this service at very reasonable prices.

There are a lot of customization options so that you get exactly the book you want. You can select all your articles to be added, or choose a date range for weeks or months. Then choose if you want to include or exclude article comments. There are a range of pre-selected book cover designs or you can upload your own cover design. Complete it by writing your own introduction text.

Remember you need to be on Google Blogger for this to work and you will have to enable full text feeds to grab all your content. Start by simply entering your url and sit back.

So how much does you new blog book cost? A 20-page softcover Blog Book will cost $14.95, while the Hardcover costs $24.95. For every extra page, you pay 35 cents! So if you have a huge blog, then keep the rising price in mind. However, you can grab your blog book PDF for only $7.95!